Quick digression followed by rank speculation, but I think it will be useful--
What draws the largest general audience at colleges are sports.
It would be reasonable if many HN posters wanted to critique college sports fans for diverting funds and energy from more important scholarly pursuits. It would be reasonable, if a bit odd, for them to do this by sarcastically nicknaming college sports fans, "Einsteins."
It would be understandable if HN posters extended the sarcastic nickname "Einstein" to other domains to target people who ruin that domain by spamming it with superficial, loud-mouthed, low-effort pursuits.
It would not be reasonable, understandable nor healthy if a critical mass of HN posters did this without knowing a) who Einstein is, b) the obvious fact that the nickname is being used sarcastically, and c) an entire department in every major college is concerned with an intellectual pursuit of extending the work that Einstein started. After all, hackers are supposed to understand the systems they hack!
Anyway, if this were the case then anyone with even a passing interest in impugning the reputation of Einstein himself could then leverage that ignorance to do so.
It's my rank speculation that "social justice" to a critical mass of HN'ers has become something of a backformation from "social justice warrior." E.g., an ignorant lurker reads a snippet about some historical figure from a social justice movement (or just a topic tangentially related to a social justice movement from the past), feels outrage over the superficiality and arrogance of SJW's, and unconsciously applies those same feels to whatever the conversation happens to be about.
This happens all the time with memes-- e.g., Tim and Eric make a convincing "Free Real Estate" infomercial parody, parody becomes a meme, Tim shows up in a film, and Redditors mock him: "Hey, it's that Free Real Estate huckster guy!"
What draws the largest general audience at colleges are sports.
It would be reasonable if many HN posters wanted to critique college sports fans for diverting funds and energy from more important scholarly pursuits. It would be reasonable, if a bit odd, for them to do this by sarcastically nicknaming college sports fans, "Einsteins."
It would be understandable if HN posters extended the sarcastic nickname "Einstein" to other domains to target people who ruin that domain by spamming it with superficial, loud-mouthed, low-effort pursuits.
It would not be reasonable, understandable nor healthy if a critical mass of HN posters did this without knowing a) who Einstein is, b) the obvious fact that the nickname is being used sarcastically, and c) an entire department in every major college is concerned with an intellectual pursuit of extending the work that Einstein started. After all, hackers are supposed to understand the systems they hack!
Anyway, if this were the case then anyone with even a passing interest in impugning the reputation of Einstein himself could then leverage that ignorance to do so.
It's my rank speculation that "social justice" to a critical mass of HN'ers has become something of a backformation from "social justice warrior." E.g., an ignorant lurker reads a snippet about some historical figure from a social justice movement (or just a topic tangentially related to a social justice movement from the past), feels outrage over the superficiality and arrogance of SJW's, and unconsciously applies those same feels to whatever the conversation happens to be about.
This happens all the time with memes-- e.g., Tim and Eric make a convincing "Free Real Estate" infomercial parody, parody becomes a meme, Tim shows up in a film, and Redditors mock him: "Hey, it's that Free Real Estate huckster guy!"